On 5/11/05, Neil Schneider <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Then I would maintain that you haven't been paying attention.
Yes... that seems to be the prevailing opinion. > 1. Stealing other companies intelectual property, to incorporate into > their products because "We're so big we can" Firstly, whether Microsoft steals because they're big or not has no relevance to the issue at hand. > a. Stac Electronics Stac Electronics v. Microsoft. Stac Electronics won and Microsoft was ordered to pay over $100 million to Stac. > b. Sun Java Microsoft settled, ceased the infringing activity, and paid Sun $20 million. > Purposely breaking competitors software then blaming the competitor, > or lying about it. > > a. DRDOS Originally, Microsoft stole CP/M code. They were discovered, taken to court, and Digital Research won, receiving money, and the right to clone DOS. Digital Research created DR DOS from MS DOS. Later, Microsoft made Windows to only run on MS DOS, on purpose, by detecting if it was being run on other DOSs and aborting. That's their prerogative. They lied to customers about it. That's not their prerogative, it's wrong and should have been punished. In this case, however, instead of fraud, they were sued for "unfair business practices" by Caldera, then owner of the remains of DR DOS. Caldera agreed to settle out of court for a secret amount of money. In each of these cases, Microsoft's wrong-doing was identified and punished. In none of these cases was it necessary to punish them merely for the fact that the wrong-doing led to greater market share. Anti-trust regulation is wrong. > The government has a legitimate role in making the > marketplace an even field of competition, not in picking > winners and losers. Markets are not an even playing field by their very nature, and in fact it's the unevenness that makes markets desirable. To paraphrase one of your arguments, perhaps you weren't paying attention in Economics class? Government should *not* be evening out the field of competition, and thus destroying the economy. Government should be ensuring that every individual human being is able to use his or her own property as he or she sees fit, regardless of whether or not that person's property is being used productively or not. They actively did that in the Stac case, they did that by implication in the Sun case, and they did that for Digital Research. When they punish a company based on its success, as in the Caldera case, they are *not* doing that. > When corporations act in anti-competitive ways to > eliminate their competition, it is the role of government > to curtail that action. How can one compete in an "anti-competitive" way? The above statement contradicts your next statement. > When the marketplace elevates one companies product > over anothers because the purchasers have made a > legitimate choice based upon cost, benefit and suitability, > the government has no role. And you get to decide "legitimate" or the purchaser does? > > To repeat: Why is government limited to busting up monopolies in the > > interests of the economy's health? Why don't they have the power to > > bust up *any* business? > > Falacious argument. Red herring. It wasn't an argument, it was a question. Whatever you inferred from it is not something I put there. -todd -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
